


Postmodernism 101

by HannaGoesUp



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Character Growth, Gen, Light Angst, Summer read too many YA novels, radicalized Summer is best Summer, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 15:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10722219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannaGoesUp/pseuds/HannaGoesUp
Summary: Summer is sixteen, and she has it figured out. She is special. She is Protagonist Material.Now if only the universe knew that.





	Postmodernism 101

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Постмодернизм для начинающих](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16112849) by [fandom Women 2018 (WTF_Women_2018)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Women_2018/pseuds/fandom%20Women%202018)



Summer is sixteen, and she has it figured out. she is special. She's read Harry Potter, okay, she knows what it means that she is unpopular at school and miserable at home. When you're sixteen years old and actually secretly super gorgeous in a way that passes for just-this-side-of-average-looking to most people, when you have a distant closet-drunk mother and an idiot father and the world's most unbearable little brother, that is because you are _special_. You are magical, or part alien, or a super genius ninja hacker. You are -- which is to say, Summer is -- _Protagonist Material_. And any day now, something amazing will happen and she will stop having to live this unbearable, farcical opening chapter of a life. 

When Rick moves in and starts banging together a spaceship in the garage, Summer feels herself start glowing with the glorious, magical warmth that only the world's biggest _I-told-you-so_ can impart.

*** 

Summer is seventeen, and she's actually pretty fucking pissed most of the time, if anyone bothered to notice. She is supposed to be _special_ , she is supposed to be the _main character_ , and instead what she is on most days is still just opening-chapter average. Except for days when something completely unacceptably terrible is happening, usually something caused by Rick and Morty (ugh, she hates that, how their names even seem conjoined, roll right off the tongue like true book-title material). Adventures actually are happening all around her nearly constantly and it turns out they _suck_. They are terrifying and they usually involve being nearly raped by aliens, or killed by aliens, or psychologically scarred by your elderly grandfather hacking clone bodies to pieces while _stark fucking naked_. 

At first she thought this was Morty's fault, that like the dumbass he is he had somehow inadvertently taken her rightful place -- but it turns out no, Morty took his own place, and he has not exactly benefited, in total, by being Rick's little toady-slash-meatshield. Not only that but there's some pretty solid dimensional evidence that Summer is, in fact, a giant fucking mistake. _Nobody exists for a reason, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die._

Ain't that, as Rick would say, a k-k-k-kick in the ass. 

***

Summer is eighteen, barely, and she is fed up with this bullshit. 

Her English teacher this year is a burnt-out Dead Poets Society type, the kind who God help us actually wears a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches. Their assigned reading is _Jane Eyre_ and _Wide Sargasso Sea_ , the major saving grace of both being that they exist in SparkNotes form and Summer does not have to try and concentrate on them when the world has gone to unbearable shit around her. She had thought maybe life would start to be a little more narratively obedient with the Federation around and Rick gone. Maybe not Young Adult Trilogy, but you know, Weird Meet-Cute Slice Of Life Novella. 

No. Life is terrible. Life is actually, truly, completely unbearable, an endless drone of the worst First Chapter bullshit. Summer _literally cannot with this_.

Cut-Rate Robin Williams did her exactly one favor, though, because in introducing the semester's material he made a statement that made everything crystallize for her, finally. "The protagonist is not predestined." 

And he'd gone on talking about colonialism and authorial gaze and blah blah blah, Summer is sure that some other person in class was eating it up. 

Summer? Had bigger things to think about. Galactic things. Dimensional things. 

Rick Things. 

And here she is, in the dead of night in the rain, struggling to cut through Jerry's obsessively tended turf into the soil and the Something Else below, and Summer feels amazing. She feels alive. She feels _powerful_. 

Because okay. Adventure is terrifying and nothing resolves and novels are bullshit. Sure, _nobody exists for a reason, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die_. 

Fine, there are no protagonists. 

Which means _anyone can just decide to be one._

And she, Summer Smith, is going to be the fucking protagonist of her own goddamn life. 

If the universe isn't going to make that happen, she thinks with a thrill of wild, slightly grossed-out joy as she pulls the portal gun from the grave, then she'll just have to do it herself.


End file.
